The bureau gave AP a chance to provide a rare glimpse of some of what happens inside the Stalinist state. And, in the event of a collapse or uprising, the New York-based news agency would have a major advantage over its rivals Reuters and Agence France Press.

AP, formed in 1846 by four US newspapers, has a staff of 3700 spread across 300 locations. It has been hit by criticism from within the small but active community of North Korea-watchers that it has entered into a Faustian bargain with the most evil regime in the world.

AP had been trying for years to establish an operation in the reclusive and repressive state before it finally struck a deal last July. Its bureau started up just weeks after dictator Kim Jong-il’s death in December, and has been in action during the leadership transition to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un. The young princeling has started with a bang, firing off a long-range rocket (which failed miserably) and then hosting a military parade where as many as 880 items of hardware were on display.

There’s no question that AP has found its subscribers keen for its Pyongyang content, but its close collaboration with state-run media KCNA has brought questions of editorial independence. The ugly nature of its partner agency was highlighted in recent weeks as KCNA ran on its website a series of slogans threatening — among other things — to rip out the windpipe of South Korea President Lee Myung-bak and carry out attacks on the South.

The AP bureau is believed to be housed within KCNA’s Pyongyang offices and AP has hired two KNCA staff to operate the bureau during the periods that correspondent Jean Lee and photographer David Guttenfelder are not there. It’s believed that, under the arrangement, Lee and Guttenfelder are allowed to visit fairly frequently, but not to reside in Pyongyang.

The arrangement has generated praise from pro-engagement Korea scholars, but in the other corner are those who argue that AP is presenting a false, regime-sanctioned picture of North Korea that ignores the gulags, torture, extra-judicial executions and starvation.

University of Sydney Korea scholar Leonid Petrov, who has led many trips to North Korea, is broadly supportive of AP’s move. But he says AP correspondents would not be allowed to interview anyone not authorised by the government and the two staff from KCNA were essentially government agents.”Every time you are in North Korea you will be accompanied by two minders. For journalists, it’s even tougher and they are shown even less than tourists are,” he told Media.

“David Guttenfelder is doing an amazing job by showing us what he can see through his enormous lens. He shows the ordinary people of North Korea; they don’t pose for pictures, so he tries to capture them with a zoom lens.”

Petrov says any requests from AP to visit prison camps or talk to starving people would be summarily rejected. He says KCNA and the regime would never have agreed to allow AP to be in Pyongyang unless the agency had reached a gentlemen’s agreement “not to portray North Korea in a damaging light” — something AP denies. Still, Petrov thinks it’s worth it in terms of breaking down barriers and helping to create a civil society in North Korea.

But another leading Korea scholar, the Asia Foundation’s Peter Beck, says the arrangement had not been a success so far and had the potential to sully AP’s reputation. “AP decided it was in their interests to put a high price — both in monetary terms and editorial independence — to set up a bureau,” he told Media.

Beck says claims by the AP to editorial independence while operating in Pyongyang “didn’t pass the laugh test”. “The simple fact is, they wouldn’t be able to keep their office if they were reporting accurately about what’s happening in Pyongyang. You cannot do both,” he says.

Beck says engaging with North Korea always comes at a price and, while there is the potential for a huge payoff if there is a collapse or other momentous event in North Korea, AP is not currently getting much in exchange for this price. “Any deal with North Korea is basically a deal with the devil,” he says.

Another keen observer of the Korean peninsula, lawyer and blogger Joshua Stanton, is so enraged by AP’s move that he has started a subpage on his One Free Korea blog called AP Watch. Stanton, who has catalogued the locations and details of various prison camps in North Korea to help lift human rights issues to prominence, has published a stream of biting posts on the blog criticising AP’s operations there and the lack of focus on human rights.

So far, AP is yet to really engage on these criticisms and has released no details of the contract it has struck to operate in North Korea. In a recent interview on National Public Radio in the US, executive editor and senior vice-president Kathleen Carroll strived to assert AP’s editorial independence.

She said if forced to choose between censoring coverage and been booted out of North Korea, AP would choose the latter. “It’s much better to be there and be able to ask questions whether or not you get all the answers that you might seek than it is to not be there at all,” she added.

Media put a list of more than 20 questions to AP about the details and ethical considerations of its operations in North Korea and requested an interview with the correspondents involved or an executive involved establishing the bureau.

AP’s director of media relations, Paul Colford, initially promised an interview with one of the players involved in setting up the bureau but rescinded the offer after receiving the questions, saying they suggested “a highly sceptical view of our efforts”.

Colford says AP’s efforts in North Korea have yielded a string of exclusive reports, pictures and videos including interviews with a senior politburo member and the sole Western in-country reports of Kim Jong-il’s funeral.

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[…] Or so Kathleen Carroll and many others at the AP hope. In the meantime, there looms over the AP the question of whether, by agreeing to play by the home team’s rules, the AP’s decision to open a bureau in Pyongyang is not the start of a new era but a Faustian deal. […]